


The Dizzying Heights

by uiveleth



Series: Nevactacus - Dizzying heights [1]
Category: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - All Media Types, Trouble in the Heights (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nevactacus, Oral Sex, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:14:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uiveleth/pseuds/uiveleth
Summary: For Rainbow_Moodies as part of Valentines_Day_2021 exchangeTakes place 6 months after the events of By Design by adrianna_m_scovill and is based in that AUMany of the events flashed back to through Nevada's eyes are from her original AU (By Design) though nothing has been copied directly from her work.  But at least the first part of this should be read in tandem with Anni's piece. Especially if you want to find out what happens in the days Vada doesn't choose to revisit in detail.Nevada Ramirez wakes and spends the first hour of his day reminiscing about his first encounter with his soulmate, and how he and his young family came to be living with him. Not much more happens than that in the first part.
Relationships: Caractacus Potts/Nevada Ramirez
Series: Nevactacus - Dizzying heights [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160525
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5
Collections: Valentine's Day 2021 exchange





	The Dizzying Heights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainbow_Moodies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbow_Moodies/gifts).



> This was written for a double prompt:  
> Continuation of tattooist AU, or Nevada getting jealous
> 
> This has turned out to be a part 1. It's not what I originally set out to write. I initially tried to pick up where Anni left off but found myself being led back to revisit the events of By Design but filling in from Nevada's view. It's a homage to her work and I have adored spending the time with Nevada talking me through his side but I hope I haven't taken too many liberties. If she doesn't like where I've taken her characters feel free to consider this an AU of an AU.
> 
> Now the ground is laid, and if this isn't hated, I will go on to pick up with my originally planned 6 month later story but without the deadline. 
> 
> Apologies for not really getting to any new smut in Part 1 but those scenes are so beautifully characterised in Anni's original I'm not so sure I could revisit them. There are some new ones planned for the continuing story, along with the jealousy and make-up but apologies to Rainbow_Moodies for not getting to more of that in this first part.
> 
> I did add penguins so I hope that makes up for it.
> 
> I can guarantee I've probably used some of the Spanish incorrectly; I've kept it to a minimum but I couldn't imagine Nevada without it. And if I've used British-isms please just correct them to US in your head.

# Song of Songs 5:10-16

My lover is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand.

His head is purest gold; his hair is wavy and black as a raven.

His eyes are like doves by the water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels.

His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh.

His arms are rods of gold set with chrysolite. His body is like polished ivory decorated with sapphires.

His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of pure gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as its cedars.

His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely. This is my lover, this my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

# Day 1: Dawn - The Jack Hour

## Awake

A sliver of light from the semi-closed curtains slipped across the room easing the room’s art deco mouldings silently from the shadows. It crept its way over a tangle of clothing, up the side of the king-sized divan, gently kissed the stubbled lips of the nearest prone figure and eased its way through the cracks into the startling olive-green eyes of the sleeper. Vada stirred languidly but his inner clock assured him it was still early – too early to have to move, and after last night, moving might be an issue.

But moreso perhaps for his partner. A faint smile twitched his lip to the left in a sloping grin as he let his half-open eyes drift to the deep-breathing mound of bedclothes beside him. As ever these had somehow made their way in the night to his _novio_ ’s side of the bed and Vada felt a delightful shiver as he resisted the urge to reach out and ruffle the dark curls that disappeared, with most of his lover’s face, into that warm cocoon. Vada burned hot. Happy to spoon through the night in the warm glow, and afterglow of lovemaking, by the time morning came he was glad to roll free of the warm _capullo_ and feel the morning air cooling the sweat from his skin.

Vada hadn’t always been an early riser. He had learned it at the group home, where if you snoozed you lost. The bathroom and the breakfast table were finish-lines it was best to be first across. Even in adulthood, living in the apartment behind the tattoo parlor, with little natural light to waken him, Vada would stir with the dawn.

His hyper-vigilance hadn’t begun in the group home. In fact, that was probably the first place he had ever managed a decent night’s sleep. Away from…his past. And he slept long hours because what else was there to do where lights-out came early. For the first time in that place, he had felt a level of safety. Once he had got through the nightmares of the first year, he had found it probably the nearest thing to a real home he had ever had. And certainly, the first stability.

Other boys in the home had wished they were with parents, real or fostered, but Vada would wish on no one his early trailer-trash years with his father’s drunken gambling and his careless mother’s grifting and casual prostitution. In the end his father’s traumatised liver packed its bags and his mother packed hers, crawling abjectly home to the Heights, leading her cowed daughter and her feral son behind her.

Vada had loved with a vengeance the tall dark stranger she had told him was his _Abuelito_. And _Abuelito_ in his turn had bonded with his strange fierce grandson and his gentle broken granddaughter. Raised in the DR by his mother’s family, Ricardo had returned to work for his father in the Heights in the 60s. The US side of the family had been grifting and grafting here from the turn of the century, engaged in a mix of legitimate construction and low-level corruption. At the time his mother dragged her depleted family home, _Abuelito_ was head of the _familia_ and supposedly untouchable in the barrio.

Thinking of his _Abuelito_ Vada felt the familiar darkness stirring inside him. This penthouse apartment had once been _Abuelito_ ’s. The first time Vada had set foot back in it, it was as if Abuelito’s ghost had poured itself in its rage through him. His body had started to shake with the buried grief he carried in his spirit. He had churned with a full-blown panic attack and nearly fled. The only thing that had stopped him fleeing back down the stairs and sealing up the apartment, this time forever, had been the flower-clad man behind him in the doorway.

Vada remembered that moment with a clarity that only attached to one other memory, one he’d rather forget. His finger involuntarily moved to the scar under his left eye and he jerked it back. The keen, newly treasured memory of that moment on the stair lived in the safest part of his mind. He could picture it clearly now.

Shaking with his darkness, turning to flee, Vada had been caught in strong arms – arms, he had noted after the fact, that were much stronger than they looked. They had wrapped around him like a band of steel – well, floral steel – as he flailed, temporarily unconscious of his actions.

Vada had no idea how long it had taken but he could still feel those arms around him, the gentle breath on his neck, the rough tweed lapel against his face, his tears soaking through the red neckerchief and the steady thumping of his soulmate’s heart, snatching back his own erratic beat, and dragging it kicking and screaming to the rhythm of its own steady pace.

Somehow, they had ended up on the floor, embraced on the corner of the landing. Vada could only be glad that being at the top of the building, no one was there to witness the moment, only the two of them, and perhaps _Abuelito_ ’s ghost. If anyone had seen, it would not have taken long for the story to spread through the barrio that ‘Tio’ had been seen blubbering all over his new ‘pet’.

Vada clenched at the thought. That was, of course, how the _familia_ saw his friendship with his soulmate in those early days. Both of them had been loath to share the ‘soulmate’ titbit of information with the family. Except for his _sobrino_ , Theresa’s second boy, Marco, who had met Caractacus when he and Nevada were still a pace short of finding each other, and had suspected something more from that day.

As Vada eased himself from the bed and toward the ensuite, his hand drifted to the dark rose inked in black and red from his shoulder to his pec and he let his mind slip back to the moment that he had first laid eyes on the sleeping man behind him.

***

## In the beginning…

He’d been on business for his brother-in-law, Roberto. Vada mostly stayed out of that side of the family affairs but sometimes his relationship to _Abuelito_ got him through doors even his brother-in-law and his nephews and half-nephews couldn’t access. And being ‘Tio’ to the current generation gave him a standing with the criminal fraternity despite Roberto’s three older sons being related to him by marriage only.

Vada walked a fine line on the edges of the family influence. He benefited from their nominal protection and they occasionally ‘requested’ his support within the community. As _Abuelito_ ’s nearest direct male descendant, sometimes Vada’s voice was heard over others. So long as it stayed on the right side of the law he usually complied.

He didn’t always like what they asked of him and the need to keep peace with the _familia_ frustrated him. That day, he’d just pulled up angrily on a red light when a sudden jolt from behind caused his inner growl to burst out in a gravelly stream of invective. Storming from his vehicle he had barely looked at the damage before throwing his frustration in the face of the bemused van-driver who was telling him to calm down and offering insurance details in the same breath.

Vada was already wound up, but his frustration was added to by the fact that the weirdly dressed driver seemed to have no idea what he had done or to whom. Though flustered, he did not appear fazed by Vada’s intrusive presence inches from his face. Vada may have recognised the bantam of his own insecurity, pushing him to make this fucking idiot quail before him, but recognising it and bringing it under control were two different things.

Vada rarely called on it, but ‘Tio’ had juice. You hit Tio’s car you sure as damnit got down on your knees in the street to apologise – you didn’t just stand there with a huge apologetic sexy smile splattered across your face.

The juxtaposition of the word and the thought was enough to bring Vada off his high ropes and into a realisation that this fucking florist (if the van decal wasn’t enough to alert him the suit said it all) was having a totally unexpected effect on his body. As his eyes had raked the lean driver, a sudden warmth stirred in his groin and a warm buzzing started at the back of his neck. He was close enough to inhale a clean, citrus smell that made his body twitch with a sudden flush of desire.

He jerked back a step before evidence of his arousal made itself known, and grabbed at the man’s wallet, extracting a business card. But as he slapped the wallet back on the flustered man’s chest, his hand seemed for a second magnetically fixed, through the thin fabric of the stranger’s shirt, to the warm beating organ beneath. It was as if a warm greeny-blue flame was pouring into his arm and finding a home in his veins.

Before, he had been shaking with dark anger but in the warm suffusing light, his dark rage slank away, leaching back to its hidden pool. With its departure a new sensation of electricity, familiar starbursts began to coruscate through him. What felt like an eternity must have been the briefest of moments. The dizzying elation was too much to bear. Unable to process, he stepped back and turned away, disconnecting that insurgent energising flow.

Random vehicles had passed, the drivers initially expressing frustration. They backed down as they got a close look at who they were buzzing and moved on. Vada reluctantly stepped away and turned with an insouciant shrug, still feeling the floral clad man’s eyes on his back as he swaggered back to the vehicle and slid into the driver’s seat. But his head jangled like a belltower and his fast shallow breaths made him light-headed.

His memory was already fixing the wide eyes, the shit-eating apologetic grin, the floppy curls of the man. His hand slipped inside his shirt to graze the dark red inking that seemed to be stirring there, from a long-frozen sleep. In the two years since Antonio had added the tattoo, by Nevada’s design, it had slept, like a flower under snow. Now Vada felt it stir against his skin as if spring had finally come, and the strange sweetness of the scent of roses filled the car.

His mind dwelt on the encounter. The van-driver had held his gaze, said some things Vada couldn’t recall. His eyes had been too focussed on the curve of his cheek and the soft moving lips to hear the words. All he remembered was wanting to reach out and touch. To yank the man by that crackpot tie and bury his face in the soft skin at his neck. The whole verbal encounter for Nevada had been on autopilot, his inner snark masking from the stranger the secret Vada whose world had just changed forever.

As he had watched the van pull around him and away, he inwardly tested this feeling. Surely if his suspicion **was** correct, that by some strange trick of fate he had finally re-found the soulmate he had mourned for the last two years, alive in the heart of his own barrio – surely that living other half of him would feel it – would know. He was fucking crazy to even think it.

With no sign of recognition from the other man, he couldn’t trust his own senses. What he **_had_** seen was that the guy had some fight in him; despite his gentle, bemused eyes he wouldn’t be just a walkover - he had some inner steel. Even if Vada’s instinctive suspicion **_was_** a lie, the stranger intrigued him. Enough to want to know more.

Vada knew the barrio like the back of his hand – knew the shop the van belonged to – remembered it opening a few years earlier and checking it out. He had a vague memory of it being staffed by a pretty, fragile blonde with sad blue eyes… being fascinated by her sweet _Británico_ accent. He had bought a single rose and presented it back to her. If his tastes had been that way inclined, he might have followed through, in spite of the ring she waved back at him with a wan smile.

Ruefully, he had asked her instead for something for the apartment that didn’t need too much light and had walked away with an anonymous pot of greenery that had somehow survived, like himself, through the subsequent two years of pain till the moment Mr Flower Potts crashed into his life.

It had been only a few weeks after his visit to the shop, that he had lost the connection with his soulmate and from then the image of the dark, red bleeding rose had dominated his night thoughts. The moment with the girl had been his last remembered moment of pure beauty and happiness, and he treasured it.

Sometimes he thought that keeping that scraggy plant alive and the memory of that last sweet, remembered moment of happiness was all that got him through some of his darker nights, as he lay, solitary and detached from the stranger, fuckbuddy, or empty space on the other side of the bed. He had never gone back to the shop for fear of shattering that image of beauty or staining it with his pain.

Since then, on the rare occasion flowers were warranted, Theresa’s birthday etc, he might ring in an order or have one of his men drop round. But now he knew that **_this_** might be waiting for him if he walked through the door…this Ca-ract-a-cus – what sort of a fucking name was that? … Now, maybe he’d find new reason to visit the premises.

It struck him that he had every good reason to visit the shop. The damage to his car was minor. Shit, if you couldn’t afford to fix the damn things you shouldn’t own one. But the desire to see the _chico-rosa_ again set his hand trembling on the leather wheel. He remembered again the momentary urge he had had to smooth his hands down the man’s chest and his imagination gravitated to the thought of trailing his fingers beneath the shirt across the softness of his belly.

His groin clenched at the thought and the thought had stayed with him, drifting subtly in the back of his mind, through what seemed an interminable meeting with local counsellors, discussing fuck knows what, followed by a visit to Johnny’s lawyers that couldn’t be put off.

***

## Night manoeuvres

It was early evening before Vada’s time was his own again. Despite being an early riser, he was also a late walker. With no other purpose he loved the feel of after-dark in the Heights, drifting from corner to corner taking in the vibrance of his community. Occasionally he would encounter an acquaintance or gravitate solo to a bar. He rarely drank to complete excess, his father’s lesson always in the back of his mind, but he drank sufficiently to numb both pain and sense; he loved to smooch in neon clad establishments where he more likely than not would find a willing partner for the night.

He recognised the futility of this peripatetic sex life – a product of both his family history and the two harrowing years of disconnection from his soulmate. He had thrown himself into this lifestyle so opposed to his own heartsease.

Once, after they had re-found each other, Vada was talking about those days and used that word, heartsease. Caractacus had laughed out loud and explained it was the name of a flower, also known as: _tickle-my-fancy_ , _come-and-cuddle-me_ , _love-in-idleness_ , _pink-of-my-john_ and the ironic and ultimately satisfying _jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me_ … which discussion had led to some interesting physical exchanges Vada almost blushed to remember.

But all that would come later. For now, his two-year drought, and the belief that his twinned soul was in his grave meant that whilst Vada usually returned home semi-sober, it was rare that he returned alone. His only condition on his various lovers was that they never allowed their lips to wander into the dark red petals next to his heart, or stray to the heart-breaking words beneath.

That night, however, Vada had walked with a purpose. It was not without direction that his feet led him the ten blocks that sat between his small apartment and the shopfront that bore the superscription ‘Flower Potts’. He found a corner free from the flotsam of young men and loose girls and watched the dark building. His thoughts were in turmoil, but you would not have known it if your eyes had landed on his languid body where he leaned against the opposing wall.

From there he could see the shuttered windows of the shop-front, but it was to the apartment above that his eyes were drawn. He lit up but, apart from the cigarillo’s glow, faded into the invisibility of shadow. Most passers-by paid him no heed – and if they were looking for a mark and came close enough to see his face, they quickly moved on.

Vada was aware of every breath and something in him stretched out to the building across the street. In a sudden lithe movement, he stubbed out his butt and slipped across to the alleyway that ran behind the shop. Wary of noise he used a tall garbage bin to climb, catlike, to the first stage of the escape, and followed the first flight to the upper window.

Unlike the windows in the front, this curtain was unpulled and the room was in semi-darkness. The apartment’s occupant obviously had no idea of security and the skills of Nevada’s misspent childhood paid off. The window catch was easily to flip. After a few seconds of listening Vada slipped in.

He could hear, deeper into the apartment the warm buzz of a voice. Perhaps the TV? Perhaps someone on a mobile? Or a family? He thought perhaps he heard the high-pitched giggle of children’s voices. He nudged the door shut with his toe and pulling a penlight from his pocket ran it round the room.

The room obviously belonged to a couple. Vada felt his stomach churn as his eyes fell on a picture next to the double bed. There was no room left for doubt. The _chico-rosa_ looked out at him with a direct gaze full of happiness and next to him, his eyes met the candid gaze of the pretty blue-eyed blonde that had been his last comfort. Between them, two cherubic faces looked up and there was no doubt of their parentage. A girl, the doppelganger for her mother – a boy, like her in colouring but with his father’s smoky-green eyes, filled with a childish glee that matched his innocent smile.

Vada felt his heart crack. The picture was suffused with happiness. Happiness he had never known. His best moments could never add up to all of this. If his inkling was correct, if this man that stole his breath was his lost soulmate, how could he compete with the happiness of this picture. And would he want to.

His starving eyes craved to see the _chico-rosa’s_ warm green eyes, melted with love, flushed with desire, looking up at him from between his thighs. Where he belonged. But to achieve that would take the destruction of **_this_**. If his soulmate was happy – if the pretty girl that looked in his eyes with such tender love had his heart, what was there for Vada. And if she **was** to Ca-ract-a-cus’s taste, as it seemed… he couldn’t bear the thought of his _chico-rosa_ finding Vada’s own physical preferences, his desire for him, offensive and looking at him with disgust or sorrow in those perfect eyes.

His drifted back to the bed, his hand smoothing the floral counterpane, the thoughts of the two of them together, here, clawing at his guts. He was bleeding internally. The dizzy darkness swelled behind his eyes as his own feelings of worthlessness struggled to break loose from the chains of reason that he had bound them with. He took a deep breath through his nose, calling on the techniques the counsellor at the group home had drilled him in. It steadied him and for a few moments more he looked around the small room.

The sound of a single set of feet echoed up the hallway, luckily stopping short of the door. The sound of running water suggested the occupants of the apartment may have called it a night and Vada slid himself back onto the fire escape just before the light snapped on in the room. He didn’t have time to sort the latch and for a moment waited for an angry head to be thrust out, but the room’s occupant briefly appeared and twitched the curtain closed without a thought.

Vada smothered a snort as he pictured the florid anger on the face of the floral clad man had he looked out and found his morning antagonist crawling outside his window. He should probably leave but it was obvious that the man was alone tonight, and he stayed put, feeling a momentary communion. Even the brief sight of that lean figure had left Vada breathless and his body demanding more than he could fulfil. He lit up again, feeling the nicotine and the remote presence of the other soothing his jangled nerves.

When the light finally snapped off, Vada made his silent way back to the street, his thoughts confused. Most nights, this would be a time when he would find some anonymous screw and release the pent-up desires of his body while dulling the pain of his mind. But despite his options, and he had many, Vada couldn’t bring himself to sully the image of the _chico-rosa_ by screwing some invisible substitute. Even at the thought he felt himself shrivel.

For the first time in a long time Nevada Ramirez slept alone that night. And for the two nights after.

***

## The following day

Despite his late night, Vada was up with the dawn. He had dawdled home, not looking forward to the loneliness of his pad… telling himself he would be best to forget, to leave alone, to pretend that he wasn’t certain (though he was) of the identity of the _tiesto_.

He’d relabelled the man in his head to try and distance himself. But he knew deep-down it was more to stop himself blurting out something inappropriate and that whatever he said in his head, his heart knew he could not walk away.

He’d slept badly… eventually had tried pulling off his sex-craving body and the demands of his churning thoughts. But body and mind refused to align and eventually he had dropped into an unfulfilled doze and welcomed the dawn with a bad case of carpet-mouth.

A shower and a brisk ten block walk cleared some of the confusion from his brain and brought him back to the flower shop just as a young woman, a slightly darker blonde with a bob, was rolling up the shutters. Vada regarded her with narrowed eyes. Definitely not the wife. A girlfriend perhaps. Another something in him snapped.

On the other hand, maybe she just worked here. If he waited for the _tiesto_ to leave on his deliveries, maybe the girl could give him the skinny on her employer… brother… boyfriend… whatever. Making like it didn’t matter to him, Vada slipped his sunglasses inside his shirt and tried to look anonymous.

A short time later he was gratified to see the lean dapper florist exit the shop. In sharp contrast to the day before, he was in what looked like it might have once been his Sunday best. The unruly curls had been slicked back and he carried a small bouquet of dark red roses. Vada felt a sudden urge to put the man into black-tie. He was handsome enough to turn heads. And yet Vada felt his heart twisting with the current desire to rush over and embrace him in his shabby gentility.

Instead of walking to the lot to pick up the van, the _tiesto_ set out on foot. Vada was intrigued. Rather than go into the shop to question the girl, as he had intended, he trailed the solitary figure several blocks and was a little surprised when he hesitated a moment then slipped in through a set of wrought iron gates into the cemetery. He supposed he should have guessed from the Sunday-wear that something was up. 

He followed at a distance and soon discovered the dejected figure of the florist standing over a grave newly scattered with roses. Vada liked his style – he hated to see slowly degrading bunches in vases by gravestones. This way the flowers would return naturally to the soil.

He slipped closer till he could just overhear, and just in time to hear the _tiesto_ recounting the story of his crash the day before, to the gravestone, addressed to someone called Mims. He flushed with embarrassment at the description of his own behaviour, but it was clear from the florist’s words he had no idea of there being anything more between the two of them than a bent fender.

Vada’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he cursed under his breath. He was already going to be late for his 10am. And his _chico-rosa_ showed no sign of moving on and letting Nevada read the dedication on the stone. Mims? He guessed it must be the man’s mother. He would have to confirm some other time. Duty called.

***

## Braving the lion

In the end it was another two days before Vada paid his second and final visit to the flower shop. His days were busy, what with work and trying to get action on Johnny’s case. Intrigued as he was about the mother’s grave, he never did make it back uptown to the cemetery.

He spent another two evenings hanging out across the street watching the upstairs apartment till the lights flickered out. But he didn’t venture again onto the escape. He couldn’t admit it to himself, but he was terrified of hearing through the window, or even catching a glimpse of his soulmate fucking his pretty little wife on their floral bedspread.

But he couldn’t stop his imagination going where his eyes chose not to. Alcohol blurred the images a little but for hours at night his mind played him vivid porn of the florist’s tight muscled ass rutting on the petite angel spread beneath him. Her gentle urgent whispers – did she call him Caractacus – her shouting his name as she came. His sparse, spent frame flopping down on her, limned in the moonlight like a benign Apollo bestowing his seed on some daughter of men.

He wondered what sounds the man would make when he came. Would he come with a roar… a whimper… a mew… all Vada knew was _he_ wanted to be the one to bring him to that edge… to look into those dewy eyes as the man strained through the last moments of his exertions. And he resented like hell that he had liked and idealised the pretty little waif that had that opportunity. His body struggled against his thoughts, switching between a raging desire and a dejected deflation that wouldn’t even let him find manual release.

If he could have spilled himself in the maw of some anonymous _mamabicho_ , he would have, but he knew in his heart it would be no use. He would look down and see the bobbing head that wasn’t the _tiesto_ ’s and want to slap its simpering face to the other side of the room. So, he slept jack-knifed, his fist curled around his aching balls, and cold-showered till he could face the day.

On the third day, he had known there was only one way to fix this. And he had dressed to kill in the steamy bathroom, raking the sleep-jagged hair that faced him in the mirror into a slick comb-back; just enough cologne to make a statement and not a stink; his black shirt slung just low enough at the neck to invite, _Abuelito_ ’s gold chain and cross that he was never without, and the merest glimpse of the intriguing red and black inked rose.

Over this he slung the leather jacket, his armour, and slid on the high-end sunglasses that he knew looked even cooler hung from his shirt. He looked what he was, a panther on the prowl. At the last, he settled his game-face on with a wry smile, cooling the hot burning green of his eyes with a nonchalance hard as steel. Today, Vada, the somewhat broken, took second seat to Nevada Ramirez the slick, craftsman of renown and man about town. Vada tipped a knowing wink to his alter-ego in the parlor mirror as he stepped out into the Manhattan sun.

Even so cocky, when he reached the shop he hesitated. The plan was to pump the counter girl for information, but what if he walked in and straight into the _tiesto_? Or worse, the pretty wife. Fucking idiota! He pulled himself together. Ramirez, you got this.

In the end, the whole exchange went like a wet dream. Except that he never quite got the information he wanted. Nevada was sharp and knew it, and he knew how to flirt with a pretty girl and how to solicit information. He was just about to get the girl to drop a dime on her boss when the _florista_ himself walked in from the back of the shop.

Despite all his snooping this was the first chance Vada had to look his _chico-rosa_ right in the eyes. The brief encounter at the van had given the barest moment of contact, but now, as his snarky Nevada persona played a subtly flirting game with the bemused and charmingly irate _tiesto_ , inner-Vada was adrift in the stormy seas of the _florista_ ’s startled bright eyes.

If a person could follow another deep into their soul, then Vada was following those paths now – recognising milestones along the way – new starbursts forming in battalions in the corners of his mind. The other man still seemed inconscient of his soulmate’s presence, verbally dicking about with snarky-Nevada. Vada didn’t know what was blocking the man from seeing him but was grateful for it.

The exchange with, (what did she call him? Jack!?) was drawing to a close. It was time to step away, but Vada couldn’t resist his craving to smooth his hands mockingly down the florist’s jacket. “End of the week”, he said, leaning into the man’s space. Though the touch was brief, Vada could once more feel the _chico-rosa_ ’s heart beating through the rough wool jacket, and liquid gold began pouring up his arms. His heart was preparing itself to break out in song and he pulled back, unwilling yet to let the _florista_ discover what Vada was now convinced of.

Joy and terror conflicted in his heart. He still didn’t know the man’s story. Or his availability. But it was enough that he was here, alive, and engaging in the obscure flirtation that had begun at the roadside, extended to Vada’s semi-stalking and was now, in his mind, out in the open, though the other was yet to cotton on.

In the words of one of Vada’s fictional heroes, the game was afoot. Feeling everything was fucking better than feeling nothing. And Vada was willing to bring on the pain to get inside his _chico-rosa_ ’s head. Until he knew for certain that the florist was a closed door, all bets were off.

Nevada Ramirez wasn’t to know that day that his planned flirtation was soon to take a back seat to fate’s take on the whole situation.

***

## Imaginary ink

Vada drifted back into the room on a waft of steam. He raked his eyes over the still sleeping form on the bed. At the lower end, the legs that spilled from the ragged parcel of bedclothes were lean and muscled. More hidden steel that only Vada got to see on his drifting mornings. He found himself flesh-doodling in his head.

Given free reign over his sleeping partner’s body, his imagination drew vines, starting at those feet and winding their way up those long leg muscles and exploding into big bright floral tribal patterns as they hit the smooth pale skin of the concealed nether regions. From there they spread across the lightly dusted expanse of his chest and squirmed their way over his shoulders bursting out in burgeoning dahlias.

Vada nudged the corner of the quilt aside, his breath catching. Green tendrils wrapped themselves around the soft skin of the sleeper’s neck. The purpling bruises from the previous night worked their way into the design. Vada might have felt shame, if he wasn’t picturing now the bruised darkening desire that had flooded his lover’s eyes as he made them – his fingers drifted to the dark graze on his own belly where the favour had been returned. His body twitched at the recollection.

The floral bouquet continued to circle the sleeping face, tiny flowers following the green shoots. Vada supposed it wasn’t surprising he doodled his soulmate in flowers. He trailed his fingers millimetres from his soft canvas, picturing the coloured inks continue their swirl till they ended in a cascade of greeny-blue forget-me-nots in the corner of Jack’s eye.

‘Jack’. The name he had first heard in the florist’s shop flitted into his mind and nestled there like it had found a home. He rolled it silently off his tongue, wondering if he would ever dare to speak it out loud. Caractacus had always seemed such a mouthful. Vada’s everyday name for him slipped between the teasing options of _tiesto_ and _chiflado_. And _chico-rosa_ , his inmost name never failed to elicit scattered roses on the floor of his imagination.

But **_Jack_** was the name he reserved for his private thoughts in this precious hour before Caractacus awoke, when he could watch with tenderness the daylight seeping into the man’s muzzy morning-eyes. To see the love wake up there. It was a look Vada relished. A look he’d never seen before finally connecting with his soulmate. Vada loved that sweet moment just before his imaginary inked flowers vanished, his protections sprang into place and the other, wise-guy Nevada slipped his face into its regular shuttered semi-mocking mask.

 ** _Jack_** was the name that Caractacus’s wife, Mimsie, had given him. As a panacea for all of the sneering insults the world had thrown at him. But where they called him a **Crack** pot, she saw him as her **Jack** pot. Vada understood the allusion better than most. His early years had been spent around gamblers for whom a jackpot was all they lived for.

But for him the connotations were not negative. He’d been searching his whole life and he’d finally found the missing part of his soul. Something deep inside him knew that ‘Jack’ Potts was his one chance to be the man he was meant to be. And every day Caractacus’s ingenuous beauty of spirit was chipping away the ice in the heart of Vada’s damaged soul a little more.

At first Vada had felt guilty even thinking of using the name. But _Abuelito_ was not the only ghost that had made its way to this apartment. Vada was never sure if she had come with Caractacus, or with the return from England of his children or possibly she had even ridden back with him from the graveyard after his first secret visit to her to ask her permission to love her husband. The words from her gravestone were inked on his chest, and sometimes he felt as if she had moved in there and lodged herself under his shoulder, in order to show him how to love their precious Jack.

However it was, Vada had come to feel that he had her permission. To use the name. And to love the man. And for that brief moment, at the start of the day, he shared this communion with Mimsie, drinking in their love’s sleeping form. Her approval had come to mean a great deal to him, though at times her presence, real or imagined, could prove a little distracting when he and Caractacus were making out.

A faint whirring from the side of the room briefly startled him and he looked round. From the corner of the room a knee-high rainbow-coloured penguin began to waddle its way towards the door. A pair of boxers was draped on its head and Vada reached out to snag them as the penguin waddled past.

He wasn’t so taken aback by the mobile bird as he had been the first time.

The penguins had been a Christmas gift to the twins from their father. They were battery powered but Caractacus had also built in a solar recharging device. When all four of them had fallen exhausted into their beds on Christmas night, no one had taken note of where the penguins had ended up.

So early on Boxing day when the morning light came through the window and the device began to charge, Vada had heard that strange whirring and a dark something had waddled across the periphery of his vision. Vada’s hyper-vigilance had him leaping up and nearly smashing the offending creature with a lamp when Caractacus had grabbed his arm. Mimi’s black penguin (a.k.a. Crow) had waddled on, not knowing how close a call it had had.

Jack had taken Vada’s shaking hand and pulled him into his arms on the bed, holding him till Vada stopped shaking and the dark-alter of his fear slank back. It was only then that he realised that while he was no longer shaking, Caractacus was. The back of his lover’s hand was pressed against his mouth and he exploded into a wave of giggles that had him rolling on the bed.

Vada, at first bashful, had quicky gotten over himself, a great gale of laughter bubbling up inside. The children had woken and rushed in and the four of them had broken the day in with hilarity, while the apartment ghosts looked on in approval. In that moment of mutual joy, Vada learned another lesson in what love and family could be.

“Fizzlewizzlebumcrumb” pronounced Remy’s rainbow penguin (that went by the interesting sobriquet ‘Gwendoline’) as it waddled into the corridor. Caractacus had built in a digital recorder and the penguins randomly spat out the twins’ current messages at inappropriate moments.

Vada tossed the boxers into the laundry. Rising early also gave him the opportunity to put things straight in their bedroom before one of the kids wandered in. He scooped up the remaining scattered clothing from the floor and slipped the lube and condoms back in the drawer. He tossed the used cloths in the bucket in the ensuite and any remaining evidence of last night’s exertions. Finally, he set a glass of water next to the bed. Caractacus always woke up dehydrated after sex and Vada always took it on himself to ensure there was cold water to hand.

Looking after the vanished penguin Vada marvelled at the ingenuity of his lover. It wasn’t till their visit to the fire-damaged ruins of the florist shop that he had discovered the other side to Caractacus’s genius. Even now, looking back, the memory of the terrifying moment he almost lost Caractacus before he claimed him blistered its way into his careless thoughts.

***

## Peek-a-boo

After the thrilling encounter in the shop, Vada had no plans and no need to trail home. He slipped into a local dive and eased his way through a couple of scotches while scanning his mobile. His stalking investigations had yielded some fruit, and the Flower Potts financials made for interesting reading. No wonder the man had balked at paying his repair bill. He may be a green-thumbed genius, but his business skills were non-existent.

A faint twinge of guilt snagged at Vada’s conscience, but he slapped it back. Everyone googled their partners these days, didn’t they? OK. Bribing an accountant might seem a step too far, but could he help it if the _florista_ wasn’t in the mood to share his secrets. Vada had contemplated using Roberto’s crew to fill out his knowledge, but he wasn’t ready to share his interest in the _tiesto_ with his family yet – even the ones he liked.

It was after nine when he sauntered back to his new favourite corner, turning his collar against the cooling air. On his arrival on the second night, he had found the apartment dark, but a faint aura of light spilling out from the basement lead-lights. Vada had been unable to see in but had made out a moving shape in the space.

Some time later, he had followed, like one to his true north, the snap off and on of the lights as his soulmate made the transition from the basement to the apartment, to the back room. The third night had been much the same but with lights in both the apartment and basement. He had figured the wife was waiting up and headed home in a fug with the devil on his back.

Still, all three nights had taught him it was unlikely the florist would retire before ten.

But Vada was wrong. Caractacus had been listless since the man in black had confronted him for the second time. In spite of his irascibility and Jack having to clench his fists to avoid slapping that mocking expression off the man’s face, something had awakened in him he had thought buried forever with Mimsie and covered with the dirt of his recent troubles.

In the earlier encounter in the street, though flustered, he had found a resurrected part of him engaging with his sleek adversary, giving as good as he got and even quipping with him. He was almost certain that through the man’s anger he had seen a gleam of something in the swiftly hooded eyes. And he hadn’t realised till today that for the last three days he had been watching the door in anticipation of their next meeting.

He had been paying no attention to the voices in the shop, when he walked in, and the unexpectedness of the encounter had jolted him like electricity. He could still picture the man: his head slightly cocked, the quizzical lifting of ‘his arched brow, his hawking eye’.

Since the afternoon, the encounter had played on his mind and he could focus on neither his plants nor his machines. After a brief video call to sing to his children he took himself to bed. He never could quite recall whether it was to rid his mind of its intruder or to dream of him. Either way he tossed and turned, churning over the nascent stirring of his long-lost inner self, a feeling that he refused to associate with the infuriating man in black. Eventually he fell into the deep sleep of emotional exhaustion.

By the time Nevada began walking back to his vigil, apartment, basement, and shop had been dark for hours. But the shop itself wasn’t empty.

***

## Conflagration

A hurried muffled figure barrelled into Vada as he turned up towards the block, barging him hard into the wall. In the subsequent struggle Vada got a clear look at the man, wild-eyed and babbling. He had a chemical, smoky reek, and though Nevada couldn’t make out most of his gibberish, the words ‘pretty flowers’ broke through.

Vada instinctively turned his head and the man pulled free and fled. It was a simple choice for Nevada to let him go, as he turned himself and sprinted towards Flower Potts. He could already see the flames roaring. His gut wrenched with dread as he saw that translucent flames were already flickering in the apartment’s front windows as the conflagration below incinerated the floorboards. Scattered figures were congregating at the kerb and he could hear the brangling distant sound of sirens.

He frantically looked round the faces littering the street, praying that his eyes would find the now familiar visage of the florist. He could have picked out the man across the crowds in Time Square; instinctively he knew neither _tiesto_ nor his _esposa_ and _mocosos_ were in the street.

He could already see smoke beginning to surge behind the back-room window. If any of the family were inside there was no time to wait for _los bomberos_. No rational thought took him to the fire-escape, but a panic born of his dread. If his soulmate were to die tonight, might already be dead, then Vada would rather die than face the living death of being alone again.

He had the clarity to grab a half-brick from the alley and toss it through the window before throwing himself up the metal stair. He knew the man slept with his door shut – the broken window would allow the smoke egress without enraging the fire. His heart in his mouth he hauled himself to the top of the ladder only to see the _loco_ _florista_ stumbling back through the apartment with an armful of toys.

He fell – Vada made to jump into the room, smashing the remaining glass out of the window with his shoulder, but the _tiesto_ clambered back to his feet. Grabbing a few items, his eyes streaming, he staggered to the window and fell out, coughing and spluttering, to his knees. Still wired from the danger, Vada turned back to the stair expecting the man to follow.

He looked back. Potts was still kneeling. Vada called out to him but then he saw the last thing the man had pulled from the room. It was the family picture. Shit. Vada had forgotten in his fug and in the relief of seeing the _tiesto_ alive that his family might still be in there. He crushed the immediate shameful thought that his life would be better if the man came without encumbrances.

Grabbing the florist by his arms he pushed him towards the stairs. “Is anyone else inside!” he shouted at the bemused man. Dark smoke was now pouring into the small backroom under the door and Vada knew if any family still lived, it would be a matter of seconds. He realised he was seriously considering running into that hellfire to save the people his _amado_ loved.

Mercifully, a quick exchange clarified that no one else was in the apartment. Vada threw up another quick prayer to whatever gods were watching over them. He grasped the other man’s arms, feeling the trembling and pulled him for one brief second against himself. In an abandonment of sanity, he momentarily pressed his lips against the man’s forehead, feeling them sparkle at the touch. He wished that time allowed for the whispering of “ _te amo_ ”s, but the precariousness of their situation returned to him and he handed the stricken florist down the rattling stair.

By this time, _los bomberos_ had arrived and Vada found himself prodded with Potts towards the waiting ambulances. Vada peeled off. He wasn’t sure if the _tiesto_ had recognised him and he sure as hell didn’t want any of his fucking gratitude hanging over his head. But his heart crowed with the knowledge that this night he had saved a life… and the life of the thing he had always most loved.

He hovered at the edge of the crowd, unwilling to leave, still tumbling smooth in his mind the thought that he could think of this stranger as his _amado_. But the man was no stranger. Vada had first felt his soulmate squall into the world on his own sixth birthday – a day when he had been wishing he were in some other life, or maybe no life at all, and he might one day have done something about it had it not been for Theresa.

He chose to stay because had made himself the promise to always protect his sister. It kept him alive. And as if as a reward, that same night his soulmate had somewhere pushed his way into the world. Vada hadn’t understood the feeling at the time – only knew that he was no longer alone – would never be alone again. _Señora_ Alva had later told him most people don’t sense their soulmate till they were older. But maybe the universe knew what he had needed that day.

He looked across the street, hardly able to stop himself from going over to comfort the forlorn figure that perched on the kerb. Behind him the smouldering building finally gave way and collapsed into itself. Briefly the man’s grief-drenched eyes flicked up. Vada ducked out of sight. He wasn’t sure if he’d been spotted but as he reconsidered crossing, the girl with the bob appeared, rushing over to the dejected man. He leaned into her intimately and she ran her hands over him.

Even though he knew it was just a gesture of comfort, Vada’s gut clenched. His feelings around his soulmate had changed since he met him… looked into his eyes. Two years before and in the years before that, he had known that the one designated by the universe to be his, was with someone else. But he had never felt any animosity to that distant pairing. Nor guilt over his own graphic engagements with partners of both sexes which he knew must register in the same way with the dislocated other, man or woman, whose soul was entangled with his own.

He often wondered if his other soul had experienced _that_ time too… the four years of Vada’s life he would rather forget. He shook his head. The boy would only have been six when it began and ten that night it ended. And it had only been in the later years that Vada’s own body had betrayed him… possibly even registered on the soulmate starburst chart. Even if the younger part of his soul had felt something… surely, he wouldn’t have understood.

Nevada’s body was reacting now. He was crashing from his adrenaline fuelled high. And his heart ached from the few meters of distance and the miles of understanding that separated him from the other man. He couldn’t watch the girl put her hands on him any longer. He was safe. And with a friend. Anything else would have to wait. And, fuck! He would have to come up with a reason for having been there tonight. Would Potts buy that he was just passing by?

He didn’t have long before he had to test out that excuse. It seemed his dramatic leap onto the fire escape had not gone unnoticed. An officer approached saying he had been pointed out as a witness. With an eye still on the lost florist, Vada gave his brief alibi and the address of the bar he had visited and explained about encountering the running man. He agreed to come into the station later to assist with a sketch and give a statement, and he reluctantly handed over his jacket for forensics. He had another back at the Prick but for now he felt naked and assailable without it.

It was time to leave. He reluctantly turned away and with swift strides took himself back to the tattoo parlor. The trudge burned out the last of his adrenaline but barely eased the knot in his stomach. He was drained and still a little shaky. He could only imagine how his _chico-rosa_ was feeling right now and he cursed his own cowardice that he couldn’t approach him with the truth and wrap his arms around him.

And, shit, he still had no idea about the wife and _niños_ who were not there tonight, or any other night Vada had watched. After he had showered and rested up, he decided it was time to revisit the plot in the graveyard. Something was telling him he would find more answers there than he had imagined.

***

## Some time later, at the Prick

Caractacus Potts walking into The Prick of the Heights was the last thing that Nevada would have expected to happen next. The man he thought he had left to the comfort of his girlfriend’s arms was still clad in his smoke-stained pyjamas with a jacket thrown over the top. Some attempt had been made to drag fingers through his unruly bedraggled curls, but it was obvious they had put up resistance.

Vada’s first instinct was to rush over and pull him into his arms, pouring molten soul-gold into the cracks of his brokenness like a _kintsugi_ pot.

(His second would have been to drag him into the back room and fuck him stupid for just being alive… but not appropriate.)

If he _had_ been tempted to follow the prompting of the insane part of his mind, the fulminating gaze of the livid, still shaking florist would have been enough to stop him in his tracks. It took a moment for the penny to drop but Vada realised with an indignant snort and a sense of huge injustice that, after all he’d done, the fucking _gilipollas_ thought _he_ was capable of being the one who set fire to his fucking shop.

Inner-Vada may have had an ass-bending crush on this _idiota,_ but Nevada Ramirez had spent his whole life in the great cockfight of these city streets. His inner rooster reared up instantly at the bruise to his honour and his ego. The same explosive rage that had walked his mother to death row still burned low somewhere in the back rooms of his psyche. Grinding his nails into his palms, Vada fought a losing battle with his darker self, as the angry florist thrust himself into Nevada’s face.

Fate intervened on Vada’s behalf, once again, before he did something he would regret forever. His youngest _sobrino_ Marco, who moments before he had been supervising as he worked on a client’s shoulder, had cast aside his needle, and smashed his left fist, straight into the ashen face of the _tiesto_. Marco was a gentle giant, but a southpaw who packed a huge punch. Next to his diminutive _Tio_ he could be an intimidating sight, but his heart was in the right place. Only a threat to his beloved uncle would bring out this fiercer side.

Right now, he stood crestfallen, wringing his hands as he watched his _Tio_ stand over the fallen stranger – obviously not happy with his intervention. Marco was a little slow, but he was the one who saw there was so much more to his _Tio_ than most others suspected. Vada flashed him a quick wry smile. There was no need for the boy to feel bad. It had looked chancy, and in his current state, who knew what the florist would have been capable of.

Blood flowing from the _tiesto_ ’s nose and over his lip. Whilst he seemed more concerned for the broken picture he had pulled from his pocket, Vada was concerned about his cheek and nose. Not only the glass had crunched as knuckle met bone. And Marco could do without the potential of a lawsuit. Vada worried for his nephews; he didn’t want either of those boys following their half-brother, Johnny to Rikers.

Marco helped him half carry the battered florist into his apartment. With a further muttered “Sorry.” He went back to the parlor to wait for Antonio, to come and continue his supervision. Vada closed the door and turned to face the deflated florist.

The man was standing in the middle of the room looking round him like a befuddled myopic owl. Vada could practically see the cogs processing that this was not the home of a man who would burn down someone’s home with them inside. “Although”, Vada thought, “There is no reason shitheads can’t like art too.”

Vada indicated the bathroom, but the guy just stood there like a dummy clutching the broken picture frame to his stomach. Here was one opportunity at least. Nothing ventured… Vada asked about the children… the wife… his breath pent within him… belatedly realised he couldn’t see the damn picture… shouldn’t have known what it was. Luckily, the florist remained unaware.

Vada was still stood by the door. He dared not venture into the room for fear the magnetic pull would carry him straight into the other’s arms. Right now, the _chico-rosa_ was forbidden fruit. His hands itched to caress that lean beautiful face… check for damage done to the roman nose… smooth away the dark smudges under his eyes. The blood on his lip still glistened.

What had he just said about his kids? Well, that explained why they were missing. But he’d rambled on without clarifying anything about the wife. Or the _¿_ girlfriend. He was talking about the fire now… hadn’t recognised Nevada on the stair… Vada guessed that explained his uncertainty, and much as he wanted to throw it back at the man, he couldn’t be held to blame for seeing Nevada as he had deliberately portrayed himself.

The circumstances had changed. Vada wasn’t sure if he had been hiding or trying to push the man’s buttons or a bit of both. But, right now, it was Vada’s truth that Caractacus needed to see. He wondered how long it would take for him to wake up to who Vada was to him. There was a frisson of fear at the thought the man might be disappointed. Vada rarely showed his true colours to anyone. He wasn’t sure where to start.

He stepped in and took the frame from the man’s reluctant hands, giving him a slight push towards the bathroom. The man’s exhaustion was tangible. No wonder he was sensing nothing. Vada’s own fingers crackled at the contact. He pulled open a drawer to grab some clean clothing, but hesitated. Now was not the best time to break the news of their soul-link, and maybe clothing he had worn would carry a vestige of him on it.

Instead, he grabbed some of Antonio’s things, discarded on a prior visit to the apartment. Antonio wouldn’t notice or care. When he pushed through the half open door, he drew a sharp breath. The man sat dazed on the rim of the tub, his shirt open to the waist. Vada shifted his eyes, stabbed by a sudden desire.

Despite the damage done to his face, the man was beautiful, lean but not to the point of skinny, his chest dusted in the centre with fine dark whorls, his pale scooped abdomen like Solomonic ivory, the trailing ladder of hair that dipped across his belly to disappear into the stained PJ bottoms that barely concealed his other endowments. Vada swallowed hard, turning quickly from the room to hide his own potential embarrassment.

He had been so caught up in the entanglement of their souls, he had forgotten the effect this man had on his body… would have had even if he had been unconnected in spirit. But Vada still had no idea if the man would have any interest in him. Had the universe made a mistake linking the _tiesto_ with a dark-haired _latino_ son-of-a bitch when he obviously preferred these pretty little blondes.

He sat, cradling the picture of the wife, absent-mindedly picking the broken glass from the frame. This was _Tiesto_ ’s choice. Dead or alive (and he was beginning to wonder which) she was the one his _chico-rosa_ had given his heart and his body to. She, he had fucked senseless. She had borne his children. The riverine eyes looked back at him from the frame and he remembered the sense of her, cool and dewy like a fresh spring morning. No wonder she was queen to his king of the dawn.

Vada set it down. He wished he didn’t have to leave the defeated man alone, but he had promised to be at the precinct for 1pm to give his statement and sit down with the sketch artist. Though Vada expected the name to reach him by the grapevine well before the police even got the sketch on the street. Still, it would look suspicious if he failed to show. Grabbing his second-best jacket, he quickly let himself out of the apartment.

***

## Sleeping beauty

It was two hours before Vada made it back to the parlor, assuming he would find the apartment empty. He wondered where the man would go. To the _¿_ girlfriend perhaps? But then he remembered. The girl was married, right? He doubted the husband would welcome an interloper. He’d thought of going round by the cemetery but the faint possibility that his guest might _not_ have moved on drew him home.

His stomach growled. He’d missed lunch and grabbed a pie on the way home. To his confusion and surprise, Antonio informed him that no-one had left from the apartment since he had himself. So, the _tiesto_ was still here.

Vada listened at his door for movement and eased it open. The only sound in the room was a deep breathing broken with intermittent snuffles. The room was dim, but he didn’t put on the light, in order not to disturb the sleeper on the bed. Potts was sprawled there supine, arms and legs akimbo. The jeans were a snug fit and the grey tee shucked up at the front, renewing Vada’s vision of the pale kissable body beneath.

He drew a breath and looked away, pretending he wasn’t stealing glances as he pottered on. Vada liked the look of him on his bed, and now the man was asleep he was able to look without caution. The worst ravages to his face had been mopped up. Vada risked trailing a finger across his lip and cheek. The man didn’t stir, exhaustion having claimed him. He lay, loose and floppy like a ragdoll or an over-large puppy, his head occasionally rolling from side to side in disturbed dreams.

Vada threw off his jacket and kicked off his boots and jeans, easing himself onto the bed so as not to disturb the man. There was no chair, and he was damned if he would perch on the bath or the floor. Although deep down a gleeful spirit of mischief was already looking forward to the man’s response at finding him there. He flicked the TV on silent and guzzled half of the cooling pie before realising that if he hadn’t eaten last night, neither had the other man.

Abandoning half of the pizza in the fridge for when Potts woke up, he pulled out a pack of micro-popcorn and shoved it in, monitoring the microwave to catch it a few seconds before the alarm. He was not surprised that the man was in such a deep sleep that the popping didn’t wake him. Setting the bag by the bed for later, temptation got the better of him and he knelt on the bed leaning over the soundly sleeping Adonis.

Little huffs were coming from his lips as his eyes moved wildly beneath the lids. Vada leaned in close and smelled the soft skin of his belly. Faint smoky aromas provided a backdrop but otherwise the man smelt of citrus and soap. Vada’s fingers trailed in the air millimetres above his exposed stomach. He could hardly breath. He lowered his hand, the lightest touch brushing the skin. The man didn’t move and bolder he allowed himself to rest both hands on the smooth plane of his abdomen.

Immediately warmth began to flow up his arms. Vada could visualise the feeling, orange warmth sweeping through his veins, blue green gaslight flickers running up his arms. For the first time the sensation reached his body sending prickles of excitement across his skin. He knew he should feel guilty, touching the unconscious man but all he felt was elation.

All of a sudden, Caractacus sat bolt upright in panic. Nevada grabbed the open popcorn bag throwing himself back against the headboard and sprawling nonchalantly as if he hadn’t just been displaying outrageous stalker behaviour. He told himself it was ok… that this was his soulmate. But it was a difficult sell and his conscience berated him.

Nevertheless, the look on _Tiesto_ ’s face awakened the devil in him and he enjoyed a few moments of messing with the man’s head, even as the lingering sensation of his stolen touch seeped away. Hence, he couldn’t resist making the man climb over him to get off the bed. Which was a bad idea… the brush of the man’s genitals against his knees, his rucked tee, and the flesh it exposed and the tight ass passing left him breathless and craving.

Luckily, the other man grabbed his mobile and headed straight to the bathroom. As soon as the door shut, Vada adjusted his shorts and pulled his jeans back on. Messing aside, he had no intention of the man returning to discover him with a full woodie. Their nascent relationship might not survive that embarrassment.

Nevertheless, Vada had a dilemma. Everything in him wanted to keep the man around. Everything felt like the man needed him. But the chances of getting through the rest of the day, maybe even the night, terrified him. No way he would survive another twelve hours without showing him either physically or personally how he felt.

Vada was glad the _tiesto_ hadn’t yet clocked him. Despite yearning to touch and be touched, he was freaking out about the look of disappointment that might cross his face when he finally woke up to the truth. There had to be a way to keep the florist onboard without having to give himself away.

The sound of voices behind the door disturbed his thoughts. Not meaning to eavesdrop, Vada still discerned the giggles of children. He guessed he was speaking with his _niños_ in London. Vada was startled then to hear a soft low voice singing behind the door. It was a simple little ditty, something about boats and mountains, but at the sadness in the voice, Vada felt tears pricking his eyes.

There had been a similar little song, simple and sweet that Theresa had sung to him as a child. Something in Spanish. He struggled to recall the words. Theresa had left when he was ten and taken his only joy with her. That first night he had hummed the tune to help him sleep, grieving her departure, but sleep and the tune and the sweetness of the love had been stolen from him the same night.

The old pain threatened to well up and he clenched his fists pulling in a breath through his nose and holding it for five… letting it out slowly. There was silence from the bathroom now. And then he heard it, a deep wrenching sob from the florist that began a wave of gasping sobs, wracking from the poor man’s gut.

Vada’s own gut moiled with compassion. He withdrew to the bed and pulled up his knees muttering a prayer to whatever god might be looking down, his soulmate the centre of his thoughts.

A short time later the _tiesto_ appeared sheepishly from the bathroom, his eyes red and puffy.

He seemed muted but at least he no longer believed that Nevada had been involved in the arson. Vada made a note to check out the guy who had been bugging Potts about buying the shop.

And, picking up the family picture, the florist confirmed what Vada had guessed – the sweet little blonde wife was no longer in the picture. The finality with which his _chico-rosa_ said the word “gone!” told him too much. He felt the jealousy squirm up inside him accompanied by the guilt. How could he hate a fucking dead woman?

The intensity of the feeling inverted it. He didn’t hate her. In a way he had loved her too, even if they had only met once. She had been both the cause of his winter and the buried spring that waited beneath it. He trailed his fingers over the leaves of the potted plant in its new prominent position. Whatever his relationship with the _tiesto_ became, it seemed his little wife would not be pushed out of it, and Vada wasn’t sure he minded.

Potts was indicating he would sleep in his van. Vada knew he couldn’t sleep here – not with one bed – and make it through to the morning. He could see that despite his three-hour nap the man was exhausted. A hotel would give him a chance for a hot shower and a proper sleep before tackling the wreck of his life.

Vada was surprised and relieved when his soulmate acquiesced to his getting him a room and arranging a ride. He had expected resistance but perhaps the man was getting used to him. He seemed glad that someone was taking charge of his catastrophe for a brief moment and Vada was grateful to be allowed to be his oasis if not his comforter.

As Caractacus Potts disappeared out of the door of the parlor with Angelo, Nevada Ramirez kicked on his boots, grabbed his phone and his second-best jacket (the loss of the other still rankled) and set out uptown for a most important visit.

***

## In the bodega

Nevada slid a handful of notes over the counter to Mr Torrence on the till and hefted a life-bag full of items off the counter. His original intention to gather a few things his soulmate might need, had kind of run away with him. He wasn’t sure if he would get away with giving him all this shit, but it was done.

He hadn’t _bought_ new clothes – that had seemed too intimate, but in a leap of faith he had packed a few things from his own drawers: some sneakers, a couple of pairs of sweats, tees, spare jeans, a sweater and at the last minute a lime green tee that Theresa had given him. That would go well with the eyes of the _chico-rosa_. He _had_ picked up clean underwear in the store – sharing those would have been way too intimate. Toothbrush, razors, Tylenol. There would be food in the hotel, but he threw in some energy bars.

The last two items, were the charger Potts was obviously missing for his phone, and a wooden frame in dark matt, with a scattering of tiny roses, that the universe chose to present him on the last unit before the till. He pushed it, wrapped in a paper bag, under the other items to stop himself from changing his mind. The charger he shoved in his pocket.

He closed his eyes a moment, picturing the dark grey stone in the cemetery. He had left one single rose there and walked away with a deeper mystery. He supposed he should have expected the words on the stone. But their presence left him awed and even a little afraid.

Vada wasn’t sure if it was better to believe in a random universe where bad stuff just happened to the unlucky, or in some higher power that designated how things should be in some cases but in others let the shit fall where it may. 

A week ago, he would have espoused the former, but a week ago he had not found words of love written in stone by a man born half a world away, and already translated into his own heart’s language in ink across his chest.

The words, and the interminable loss in their song, had come to him in dreams two years ago, as his life had spiralled into a lonely darkness. The pain in the inking of the dark, red and black rose had seemed a penance for some unspoken crime. The inscribing of the words themselves brought the numbing peace he remembered from his cutting days, in the group home. Those scars were almost gone now, though the scars on his psyche remained.

He wondered if in the end he had numbed the loss himself or had the other done it? Either way their two-year severance had been his cross and he had borne it ill. But something new had been born in Vada the day of the crash and though he still nurtured it out of the light, he knew it was beginning to grow. Hope. If the universe could do this, perhaps hope could be trusted.

His cell buzzed in his jeans and he slipped it out. Why the fuck was Antonio calling him at this time of the evening?

***

## A strange fellowship

Vada grimaced as he pushed the door. There was no sign that he’d taken the stairs two at a time nor that he’d trashed red signals to get here. He knew what Hector was capable of. In the end, things weren’t as bad as he’d expected but his heart liquefied at the sight of the woebegone _florista_.

He shoved his fists in his pockets, mostly to stop himself from going over to the man. He did feel a strange sense of pride, when he heard that that Potts… Caractacus, had fought back, and to see his nonchalance in the face of obvious pain. Vada had had a hard life and had battled through. Tenacity in his alter, that was like catnip to him.

The immediate danger being past, and triage done, Nevada revelled in the extra chance to spend some time with the man. Not that he’d really planned on staying away long. Even if all he could do was be with him, and not **_be_** with him, it was becoming as necessary as breathing to him. When he was away, he was drowning. **_This_** _._ This was oxygen.

He was ready to take his time which is why the next turn in their conversation took him aback. He had not expected to be discussing either of their sex lives within five minutes of walking in, yet there it was. He had to admit he had expected a level of prudishness – the man wore striped PJs, for crying out loud.

He was more relieved than expected, to find he could take the question mark off **_girlfriend_**. He instinctively believed the man when he said there was nothing between himself and the delightfully named Truly Scrumptious. Didn’t mean the man was available but even the thought that he might be had Vada locking down his reactions.

In spite of his post-shower beating, the florist smelt so good and Vada felt the urge to lean in and test the waters. A small pulse beat on his unshaven throat and Vada longed to rest his lips on it and breathe deeply from the clean scent of him. But despite his apparent openness, the other man’s trust was too new to risk.

It did seem, however, that something **_had_** changed… that the _chico-rosa_ might be happy for him to stick around for a bit. Maybe even get to know each other. Maybe even bring him back to the apartment after all.

To say that he was surprised when his soulmate counter-offered with an invitation to stay would be an understatement. But Vada was a past master at playing cool. So far as the other man knew, it was no great shakes to spend the night. In reality, he was crapping it. He felt like a kid with his first crush. But ultimately enjoyed that feeling.

He wasn’t sure how or if he would be able to keep up the façade. Both on the soulmate thing, and his own burgeoning desire. Potts was not his **_type_** , per se. He lacked the louche disconnection of Vada’s usual fuck-partners. But Vada had never met anyone who turned him on mentally the way this man did. Despite all the trauma, he was so much fucking fun.

And Vada knew he wanted him with his whole being. Mind, body, and fucking soul.

***

## Could there be more to this?

Nevada Ramirez couldn’t recall if he had ever just sat around in company or laughed so much with another human being without first checking his persona into place like a personal armour. Somehow this man got under his skin. Everything that had been hard became easy. (He qualified that thought.)

Shit, he even found he was flirting, and without his usual considered edge. And the _chico-rosa_ , apparently, was flirting back. He was tempted to see what taking the edge off would do for the man. A good dose of sugar and alcohol would sure go down well after the night and day they had both had, and he was sure the bar could come up with something with a bit of a punch that would suit the florist’s candy-ass.

The newly appointed night manager was on-side and swiftly arranged for ice-cream and Schnapps. Vada tipped the waiter, closed the door, and made to change. He had stripped his shirt and half his jeans when the bathroom door flipped open and the man stepped into the room. Vada felt like he flushed from head to toe. He couldn’t breathe – well, barely enough to let out a curse before his scrabbling hands found his sweats and yanked them on.

Damnit, he felt like some silly little girl on her wedding night. Nevada Ramirez would think nothing to strolling across his apartment buck naked in front of some stranger, but here he was, shy as a deer in the headlights, hiding himself from the hot gaze of the other man. Hot? Fuck! He realised that Caractacus was standing transfixed, his smoky green eyes drinking him in.

With a sudden movement, the florist tore away his gaze and turned to the wall. Nevada reached for his tee. But the damage was done. Tiny starbursts continued to twinkle in his peripheral vision. Curiously, he regarded the lean back of the other man. He guessed that only the florist’s unawareness of their true connection kept him from the same lingering effects.

As Vada regarded himself in the bathroom mirror, he wished for a moment that the other man’s reaction could have been about more than just embarrassment. He had no illusions of this lilywhite lover of sweet, petite girls being drawn to his swarthier stocky frame. Nevada looked good, and he knew it, but you weren’t always lucky enough to buck nature.

He screwed up his courage to venture back in the room, but the moment wasn’t awkward. There was a pending excitement yet domesticity about slipping between cool sheets with this man, in their twinned sweats and tees… though Vada would have preferred naked. A wave of exhaustion swept over him as he fixed his gaze on the muted TV. An exhaustion both emotional and physical.

As the sweet ice-cream and the heady Schnapps soothed his ragged breathing, his awareness of the man next to him kept him alert. Half-an-hour into the nondescript but amusing film, he caught the Schnapps glass as it fell from the loose fingers of the sprawled figure. Leaning over he set both glasses next to the open bottle and brushed the briefest of kisses on the sleeping lips.

Drawing in a sparkled breath he eased himself up to the headboard, snagging the florist’s long fingers in his own as he flipped the lights and half-sat, half-lay for a golden eternity – switching his eyes between the film and the pale, battered face that its flickering light illuminated – until his exhaustion and sleep finally claimed him.

***

## The heart wakes

Dawn and reminiscence wrapped Nevada drowsily like a blanket.

The sound of children’s voices reminded him that dwelling on some of the events of those next few days might be inappropriate. He would reserve those thoughts for later.

But he couldn’t help a fleeting drift into those moments.

The heavy physical arousal of that first morning, waking with the, as yet untested… untasted _tiesto_ wrapped around his body;

…the strange healing flow that flooded from him as he checked the darkening bruises that sprawled across the man’s chest and ribcage;

…the strange intimacy of the man watching as he worked in his parlor – a silent communion that spoke more than words.

And in the tiny apartment, his own surprising offer to the _chico-rosa_ , one that he hadn’t quite yet managed to bring himself to fulfil. A moment had occurred in their tentative flirtation that shifted his mental enjoyment of the dalliance to a realisation that the man that he was craving, with zero expectation, might seriously be considering something a little more physical.

In his confusion he had at first misunderstood the offer of who might do what to whom.

Everyone in Vada’s string of partners knew where his boundaries lay. He reckoned many probably knew why. His stepfather had never been discrete among his cadre, but no one had ever ventured into those hidden places of Nevada’s, where his moments of helplessness and pain lived, and he had never cared enough for anyone, to either want to yield that control or examine that shameful time.

But more and more now he was wondering what it would be like to follow through with Caractacus, **his** Jack, on the surprising offer he had inadvertently made during that first liaison.

Six months had passed now since he had impulsively considered taking a knee at the foot of a stranger – a **_not_** stranger… And something of the lost young man he had once been, now yearned to submit to his lover in a means of love that he _had_ felt was forever barred to him. He had come close several times, trailing his lips southward across Jack’s pale belly, tasting, sucking, knowing the familiar salty taste of Jack’s soft skin.

Also knowing well his own taste on his lover’s lips, having so many times slidden down his still-aroused body to claim his recently assailed mouth; slipping his own hand between their sweat-cooled torsos to bring Jack his well-earned release.

But each time he himself ventured himself to move his lips southward, to the throbbing core of his soulmate’s groin the darker memories would well up, and he would break away, returning instead to his partner’s chest and mouth and claiming with his hips the territory that Caractacus yielded to him with such elan.

Jack was a generous lover. Vada knew that his marriage with Mimsie had been fully served. But Jack accepted Nevada’s reservations wordlessly. Vada knew the man had no sense of unfulfillment, that everything that he could offer **_was_** enough. Jack might fantasize beyond Vada’s closed doors, but his gentle heart understood it would take time for his soulmate to break down the defences erected over so many years. Vada even suspected that through their soul-entanglement, Jack himself may have been a subtle victim of his stepfather – and might understand more than anyone else could.

But deep down, despite his justified reservations, Vada wanted to give his all; to finally be free to love Jack and let Jack love him in **all** the ways that were possible between two lovers.

The yearning brought on a sudden craving to touch the sleeping man, to see where the moment might take them, but recalling the imminent presence of the children, he shook his head to clear it. His familiar wolfish sideways grin slipped onto his face as he recalled that he had a two-hour window in his morning that might just align with a break in deliveries for his lover.

At that moment, Jack’s eyes slid open, to be greeted by the louche wolfish glint in Nevada’s. Jack’s green eyes glittered in response, as he took in the raffish beauty of the man that daily welcomed him to his world. He swallowed hard, the bloom of arousal nudging him to awareness of his higher need to pee. He disentangled his limbs from the bedding and swung his legs off the bed, surging up in a movement that took him into his soulmate’s arms.

Vada could have held the kiss for the rest of the morning but sometimes now it was he who had to remind Jack of the other occupants of the apartment. He tapped-out on his naked butt – somewhere in the last six months pyjamas had gone by the board – and reluctantly Caractacus stepped out of his arms. Picking up the glass, he tossed back the water, his throat bobbing, kissably.

Vada felt again like a schoolkid with a crush. He never got over touching Jack, feeling their connection burn. Jack laid his down the glass. He slid his chilled hand up Vada’s abdominals, pushing up the burgundy tee (at least it was one step away from black) and pressing his lips to the newly inked tattoo there.

The design was Nevada’s, though approved by Caractacus and the children, and he had even risked giving a delighted Marco free reign with the needle.

It consisted of five cogs, the first, half-hidden, seemingly emerging from behind the “te amaré” of the black and red rose, linking into a larger cog that sat just below Nevada’s heart. To its side it engaged with a set of spokes that appeared to vanish beneath Vada’s own lower pec on the other side… to the hidden cog of his heart. And between the curve of the three cogs nestled two smaller ones. 

Twisted through the whole was a rambling rose creeper scattering tiny red and black roses where it trailed. On either of the smaller cogs it ended in a tightly clenched rosebud, and on the central cog it opened out into a perfect white rose, with a faint blush at the heart.

It was inevitable that Vada would put his emotions on his skin where they could say what his words could not. Since he had learned that the dark-red rose inking alluded more to their shared grief for the lost Mimsie, his imagination had been playing across that soft area below his ribs where Jack’s lips loved to nuzzle. He wanted something there that was all for Jack.

But strangely, from the moment of their arrival, Jack and Mimsie’s two cute-as-a-button kids with their intriguing personalities had worked their own way into the designs. Even though it was only six months, Vada loved the fierce little grown-up Dama with her quirky artistic designs and the gentle cloud-dwelling soul that was Remy.

Vada saw in them the ‘might-have-beens’ for Teresa and himself and vowed with a vengeance to protect them from the darkness that had so damaged his own childhood. Already they had lost so much – their mother to cancer and much of their father during his two grieving years. But their joyful presence in the room where he and Theresa had suffered so much was slowly bringing healing to some of those memories.

The children had flown home a few weeks after the fender-bender that changed his life. Caractacus had intended flying back to England to pick them up. Vada would have happily funded the trip but both the exigent circumstances of the fire and a strange reluctance in Vada to leave New York had led to its postponement.

Vada still hoped he would one day feel able to make the trip, to see where Jack and Mimsie had first begun. He knew it was irrational, but for him, the thought of exiting the city that had embraced him in childhood shook him to the core. He still recalled the day he had first crossed the Hudson to the bustling metropolis and this place had become his roots and his grounding.

He had found out, at the age of twenty-one, that _Abuelito_ had left to him the brownstone block where he had spent his early teens. Instead of his expected life as an itinerant artist, working his living where he could find the pay, he was now the landlord of a prime block of Manhattan real-estate. Vada had returned to the Heights and lodged his roots deep into his community.

These streets were his family; every corner carried a memory of his frankly delinquent youth but also the warm comfort of his _Abuelito_ ’s presence.

Even the group home had been just a little uptown from here and Vada’s blood flowed with Manhattan city energy. Since the age of ten he had not taken the journey back across the Hudson to the wider US, nor flown south to visit his _Abuelito_ ’s heritage, and the thought of separating himself from his identity in this city brought him to the edge of his darkness. He had never wanted to leave. In fact, six months earlier, he hadn’t even owned a passport.

The stress of potentially disconnecting from this place had brought on a night of nightmare when Nevada’s dreams had woken him shaking and crying-out for the lost inner child of himself that still haunted these streets in a dichotomy of love and hate.

He had woken sobbing with strong arms around him like hoops of steel, holding together the staves of his shattered psyche, and he had released his wracking sobs against a strong shoulder that absorbed his pain and sent back a great wash of the gentle familiar presence of his soul-in-another.

In his peripatetic lovemaking days, Vada had rarely shared his bed till the morning. He took his gratification where it was offered but more-often-than-not, found his way back to his own place. Anyone he took back there knew to leave as soon as their encounter was over. Having a lover’s presence with him through the night and into the morning – someone being there through his rare but vicious nightmares – was something new to Vada.

He had never snuggled with a lover nor shared whispers of grace and desire. He hadn’t been an ungenerous lover, but a disconnected one. Since he had met Jack, in those moments of togetherness, there were things they both shared without words. He couldn’t imagine now waking up alone, now that waking up with Jack was an option.

***

##  _El capullo_

Jack pressed his lips on the close-packed, pink-edged petals at the heart of the white rose and Vada’s still pained flesh drank in the warmth of his summer. Vada ruffled his fingers through the softness of his dark curls and looked down into his melting eyes. They held a promise for later that caught Vada’s breath in his throat.

Jack uncurled sinuously from his crouch, and sashayed his naked butt towards the bathroom, casting a green glint over his shoulder. He knew Vada loved to watch the ripple of the hidden steel beneath his skin. The florist had not been so naïf as Vada had first thought him, and Vada had enjoyed finding that his inventiveness extended to the bedroom. Aside from caution around the children, he wondered how they ever got past this moment of the day.

He crossed to the bench and worked off his adrenaline while the shower hissed in the ensuite. Down the hallway he could hear Mimi also getting herself up and ready. Past experience said Remy would still be curled in his bedding like his father.

***

##  _Abuelito_ ’s gift

Caractacus had changed his plans to fly to England. Vada hadn’t asked him to. He had screwed himself to believing he could bear the man’s absence for a week, after having lived without him for so long. Caractacus said all was fine, but Vada sensed there might be another more secret reason why the man chose not to travel to London alone.

So, the children’s escorted flight was booked for three weeks hence and Nevada and Caractacus buckled down to the task of making a home for them.

There had been no question in Vada’s mind as they discussed the children’s return that he wanted his _tiesto_ to stay in his life and by rule of nature that meant his kids belonged there too. Vada had no problem with kids and had done his best to be a part of his nephews’ lives – well, two of them at least. Johnny, he had done wrong by, but he was trying to make up for that now.

The girl, Dama, he had previously met and liked on video – the boy’s sweetness was immediately apparent and in no way saccharine. And they were part of Caractacus… and Mimsie, who was now apparently a part of him. His one concern was that the florist might be influenced by his exigence to jump too quickly into a shared life. But when he shared that concern, Caractacus had taken great lengths – in fact, his own great length – to convince him that he was as invested in their making this work as Nevada.

By the time they got back to the discussion in point, Vada had made a decision. He loved the small home he had made in the little apartment behind the parlor. It had been enough for his simplistic singleton needs. He would always remember it as the place where he had taken his _chico-rosa_ ’s virginity and the _tiesto_ had buried his roots into the virgin territory of Nevada’s heart. But it was too small for, and no place to raise a family.

His heart stuttered at the realisation that his thoughts had somehow shifted from his day-to-day, devil-may-care approach, to thinking long-term about a partner and family.

It had been a no-brainer that the empty apartment at the top of the block would be the perfect relocation for the four of them. And that same day, Vada had tilted at the first of his dragons, taking Caractacus in the vintage elevator to the door he had long avoided.

Once over the hump of his initial distress, Vada adjusted himself to the familiar yet long forgotten space, and his ghosts adjusted themselves to his presence. Caractacus stayed close as they entered the bedroom which they now shared, throwing back the rich drapes to let the light in. The bare walls would look better for some artwork, but the space was clean and bright and the attentions of _Señora_ Alva over the years had kept it spick and span.

Vada had expected questions as to why the place had been mothballed for so long, but he wasn’t ready to answer those yet. As they approached the next room, he leaned against the doorpost, not quite ready to step in. Of course, the place was nothing like it had been the last time he had been there. He wondered if they had replaced the boards or if the dark bloodstain still existed beneath the carpeting. There had been tenants in the place for eight years and he wondered if they had ever known that two people had died violently in this room.

The couple had moved on a year after Vada was handed the keys to the block. The lawyers who had managed the trust and the letting agents had put pressure on him to let to new tenants, but for Vada this place was _Abuelito_ ’s shrine. To keep the agents quiet he had told them he was moving into the space himself, and for all these years he had kept up that façade, whilst actually living in the small downstairs apartment.

He had been willing to hand his _tiesto_ the keys to the space, and walk away, if that had been what Jack had asked. But Caractacus took Vada by the hand and pulled him past the guarded doorways in both the apartment and his mind. They had sat on the new bed, in the place that had once been his, Jack’s fingers wound in his own, and hesitantly Vada had disclosed the events that had taken place there. He had felt he had to, before asking the man to let his children occupy that desecrated space.

Sharing the facts was only a part of the process, and Vada knew there was much of his darkness still to be faced – many more dragons yet to slay. But Jack had eyes that saw his true heart. He made it clear that not only was Vada welcome in his life, but that he was ready to entrust his children to him. The sweet-hearted man’s presence in the room and his words of trust and love were like hyssop, cleansing the dark shades of the space.

A small boy of about ten ran across the periphery of Nevada’s vision. At first Vada thought it was Jack’s boy, but the child had a mop of dark curls, not blonde. He gave a cheeky sideways grin that lit up his face from ear to ear, and his eyes flashed with an impish peridot as he disappeared into the mirror. The same sloping smile slipped onto Vada’s face as he realised that not all his ghosts from this place would prove to be unhappy.

***

## Picking up the pieces

The decision being made, the three weeks before the return of the twins had been a whirlwind. They had worked together on turning the vacant apartment into a home, and the bedroom into a space that would be perfect for the twins. There was a smaller room to the rear of the property that would be Remy’s when the time came for the two to separate but Caractacus still felt they would be happier together, at least till they settled in.

Vada found himself picking out, with Jack’s support, art and posters suitable for the two children, and replacing as much as was possible the toys and memorabilia they had lost in the fire. They spent evenings online finding new and replacement items to help them adjust to their new surroundings. 

After the fire they had manage to retrieve a few precious items from the ruins. Mimsie’s jewellery box had been recovered largely intact by the fire-investigator and was returned to Caractacus after it had yielded up little evidence. Other than that, nothing much survived of the twins’ room, and the apartment lounge had crashed into the body of the shop leaving nothing to be retrieved.

The wreck of his life had hurt Caractacus deeply and he had turned to Vada with a terrible look on his face and asked him, what would have happened if the children had been home. Vada knew in his own heart that if that had been the case, Jack would never have left, and his own charred remains would lie in this grave to his former life. He wondered again if he, himself, would have been able to leave that fire-escape, or would he too have been compelled to throw himself on that terrible pyre.

He shook off the thought, taking the broken-hearted florist into his arms, not caring who saw. Let the world say that _Tio_ was soft for the defeated man. As ever, the warmth of their embrace and the flickering blue-green flames of their internal fire provided restoration to both of their fantasized griefs. The twins were safe. Jack was alive. They had each other.

It was picking through the blackened ruins of the _tiesto_ ’s abode that had provided the day’s other revelation to Nevada. Though he’d already heard tell of the supposed flying car that currently resided in England, Nevada had not quite understood the depth of his partner’s interest in mechanical objects.

He had been working through the now stabilised wreckage from the kitchen, trying to work out the purpose of several strange, smashed devices when Caractacus ran up and took his hand, “Nev, come and see…”. Vada followed obediently as his soulmate slipped down the steps to the basement into semi-darkness. Light crept in at the rear of the basement where the boards had collapsed into the lower floor.

Blinking Vada moved into the space to where his _tiesto_ was crouched over a tabletop full of plants and waved his hand excitedly at several pots of roses, undamaged by the falling rubble or the water that had streamed through the roof. His delight was palpable. Vada understood his joy, but his attention was grabbed by the other contents of the basement.

Here and there were scattered pieces of mechanical devices, some of which looked very much like the result of dumpster diving. A few were intact and Vada’s design-eye appreciated their art as his mind tried desperately to determine their purpose. At least he had an answer now as to what his _tiesto_ (or should he now add _chiflado_ ) had been up to in the cellar.

Later, his own personal crackpot had reassembled or recreated some of his strange machines in the apartment, whilst planning to put what could be retrieved of his other devices into storage. But fate had again intervened. Mr Torrence who occupied the bodega on the other corner of Vada’s block frontage had decided it was time to retire to be with his family in Jersey. Recently his store had been declining with the change in the demographic of the area and the opening of a new market two blocks over.

Hearing of the loss of the Potts’ premises, he had asked for a meeting, offering to sell Nevada back the lease on the store, his apartment, and the basement space beneath. It had come with a sigh of relief to Nevada, as Caractacus had been worrying about the length of time to rebuild (even if the insurance was going to pay out in full).

Although it hadn’t mattered to Vada at all, his income from the building being far beyond that needed to support four mouths, he knew the florist needed deep down to be back at work. And inventing – whether it be with his plants or his mechanical contraptions. Vada understood; whilst not having any financial need to work himself, being an artist fulfilled him.

Everything fell into place quicker than they could have imagined. Mr Torrence posted his closure notice and a flash sale cleared most of the shop and basement. The insurance had paid out swiftly and even if it had not, Mimsie’s soulmate had gone ahead to purchase from Caractacus the lease to the location where Flower Potts had once stood. Jack no longer felt like a dependant on Vada and insisted on buying out the lease for the corner store and paying for its refitting.

Even Truly, who Caractacus could now pay a decent wage, relocated to the attached apartment with her husband, and could be on hand to take over as needed, which, Vada recalled with a smirk, allowed him greater access to lure the enticing florist up to his den in the middle of the school-day, where they could find the privacy to delve into their growing closeness. Wooing his _chico-rosa_ from his duties was a game that captivated Nevada, and Caractacus rarely resisted his solicitations for long.

The surviving contents of the basement at the florists had been transferred to their new residence. Vada hadn’t told Caractacus where he had obtained the overhead lighting that allowed him to create the underground greenhouse, nor his sly intent not to pass on the cost of the electric to run it. He had however dropped a quick word at the precinct in case of rumours and the city had threatened regular inspections to ensure the equipment was not put to the wrong purposes.

The other, larger space in the basement had been set up as a workroom to allow Caractacus to tinker and it also acted as a place of escape if either of them ever needed a break. Knowing the man was still effectively under his roof made it easier for Vada accept those small separations.

Early in their reconnection it had been difficult for him to be anywhere apart from Jack. He had struggled with terrible separation anxiety for weeks after their meeting. A soul that had been starved for love, glutted itself on the feast of connection laid before it. Jack was Vada’s candy-shop and he thought he could never surfeit of him.

That craving had proved a difficult beast to wrestle. It had been accompanied for a time for a crippling sense of gratitude that made Vada feel at times like a weak waste of his soulmate’s best qualities and that in his own brokenness he could never be enough.

Six months of love without judgement from his partner had brought an easing of that tension, although there were days it still surfed into him on the waves of his dark ocean. Of course, there had been disagreements and quarrels, making-ups and making-outs. The tussle of being with another human being, and then three, had been hard for Vada.

But he still recalled the moment on the children’s first day, stood outside the ruins of Flower Potts, when little Remy had turned naturally into his arms, his tiny frame wracked with sobs as he turned from the rubble of his last link with his mother. If Vada’s imagining of her ghost within him had been real, he could not have felt more love at that moment.

Perhaps he had been afraid till then that the return of the children would reduce what he had with Jack, but, folding himself around the grieving father and his soul-bound children, under the watchful inward gaze of their ghostly mother, Vada felt like he could never again know such happiness.

Perhaps the doubting part of his nature also watched on that day, waiting for the other shoe to drop, reminding him of the precariousness of the dizzying heights of his love. But in that moment, he believed only in the promise that one day it might be possible for all his dragons to be slain and for him to be free.

***

## Butterflies

The bathroom door opened with a whirl of fresh steam and Caractacus stepped back into the room.

A towel was wrapped his waist, but above it the alabaster planes of his body formed the canvas on which Vada longed to ink a thousand years of their life together. A myriad of imagined butterflies swooped across the taut but soft belly and disappeared beneath the towel.

A synchronic flutter stirred his own belly as he looked up.

Their green eyes met in an explosion of silver-green starbursts. 

As he strode across the room, Vada’s besotted heart whispered, “te amo, Jack” and though he couldn’t be certain, the look on his soulmate’s face was enough to tell him the words had finally made their way from his heart to his mouth.


End file.
